Archive for the ‘Nature’ Category

I’ve been photographing birds for a few years now. The title may be a bit misleading, I haven’t photographed my one hundredth bird… I’ve photographed my one hundredth bird within a single country. And oddly enough, it’s not Australia.

Despite living here, I’ve so far only managed to photograph 94 different Australian bird species. But on my recent trip to Tanzania, I spent about five days looking at wildlife, and I took a lot of photos of birds. I still haven’t inspected all of the photos to identify the species, but last night I identified the one hundredth species from the photos I took on that trip. So I now have 100 species of birds photographed in on country: Tanzania.

This evening my wife pointed out that there was a bug crawling up one of the vertical blinds in the living room. I walked over, saw it was an ant, and grabbed it to take it outside. Next thing I knew, my thumb was like on fire, I threw the ant across the room, and screamed loud enough that my wife thought I was dying.

Turns out it was a bull ant (Myrmecia sp.), which are more or less common where I live in Sydney. I thought I’d been stung by these guys before, having experienced several very painful ant stings in the past, but no, this was a whole new level of pain. All my previous ant sting experiences must have been different species with less potent venom. (And yes, they sting with their tails, they don’t bite with the jaws.) After recovering the ant and immobilising it in a ziplock bag, I took this photo:

Fortunately, I’m not allergic to these guys. For people allergic to the sting, Wikipedia says median time from sting to cardiac arrest is 15 minutes, and most people are dead within 20 minutes. In non-allergic people, all that happens is intense pain. I iced it, and an hour later it’s still quite intense.

After donating blood today (my 58th donation), I went over to one of my favourite bookshops, Abbey’s on York Street in Sydney. I hadn’t planned to buy anything in particular; mostly I wanted to check up on the status of an order I put in for Star Wars Art: Ralph McQuarrie (Publisher | Amazon). Good news: a new shipment of these arrived in Australia today, and I should have my copy within a week.

I also saw that Volume IV of Peter Ackroyd’s History of England: Revolution (Publisher | Amazon) was finally out in the smaller paperback size that I have been collecting, so I picked up a copy of that.

And then browsing the science section, my eyes fell on not a book, but one of those notes that bookshops have nowadays handwritten by a staff member, telling you how much they enjoyed a particular book. It was sitting under copies of a book titled The Australian Bird Guide (Publisher | Amazon). The note said that the writer was a keen birdwatcher and had all the other Australian bird field guides, and really wasn’t sure if yet another one would be capable of adding anything. But she was converted by the unprecedented depth and detail of this guide, saying it contained hundreds of facts and distinguishing features not mentioned by any of the others. This really is the one Australian bird guide to Rule Them All.

So on that recommendation, I bought it. And flipping through it now at home, I too am blown away by how detailed and lovingly produced it is, with lashings of amazing quality illustrations – often 4, 5, 6, or even more different images of each species, showing both sexes, juveniles, intermediate growth stages, moulting phases, breeding phases, perched, in flight, and regional plumage variants. Picking a bird at random – the ubiquitous and boring silver gull – it has eleven different illustrations showing different growth stages and regional variations in the black and white plumage of the wing tips.

My previous guide was The Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds (Publisher | Amazon), which I chose over the slightly more popular The Field Guide to the Birds of Australia by Pizzey and Knight (Publisher | Amazon) after browsing through both in a bookshop some years ago. I preferred Slater because it was lighter, I preferred the illustrations, and it had more description of bird behaviour and less of things that I wouldn’t normally see like nests and egg colouration. But this new book definitely wins on all fronts, except the lightness and portability.

I guess this is a recommendation, then! If you’re in the market for a field guide for Australian birds, look no further than the new Australian Bird Guide.

I really should go through all my old travel photos and specifically look for photos of birds that I never identified. I just found another species of bird that wasn’t in my list of photographed species, lurking in some old photos from my 2011 trip to South America.

I’ve had a couple of good days for spotting wildlife. I saw this fellow sunning himself on a rock as I was walking home from work today, just 50 metres or so from where I saw the brushturkeys yesterday.

This is an Eastern water skink (Eulamprus quoyii). It was maybe 40 centimetres long. I managed to poke my camera fairly close before it scooted away.

Following up my urban bird post of the other day, I was astonished this morning to come across a pair of Australian brushturkeys while walking to the station to catch the train to work. I know these birds are around the city, but I’ve never seen some so close before, nor so close to my home.

They’re very territorial, so I’ll probably see them again in the future if they’ve moved into the area. At this time of year they’re probably either building compost mounds to incubate their eggs, or already looking after a clutch of eggs or chicks somewhere nearby.

I was walking home from the railway station after work today and I noticed an ibis and some parrots flying overhead. And I figured it might be interesting to list what birds I typically see in my daily life here in Sydney.

Pigeons. Yeah, they’re all over the place, alas.

Noisy miner. This is easily the second most common bird I see. And the most common one I hear – they’re not called “noisy” for nothing. They constantly chatter away as they flit around gardens and parks. The noise isn’t loud or offensive, just prolific.

Australian white ibis. Probably the next most common bird I encounter. I often see them flying relatively high and for longish distances across the city. If you look up at the sky much in Sydney, you’ll see these birds travelling from suburb to suburb. I often see them out the window of my office building too.

Rainbow lorikeet. Common around my home, since there are lots of gardens and some bushland in a nearby park. Sometimes they come and sit on my balcony (pictured). Some people feed them, but you need to be careful not to give them food that is bad for them.

Pied currawong. Usually just called currawongs, these are the only one of three currawong species commonly found in Sydney. These can be loud birds, with a very distinctive crow-like cry.

Australian magpie. Unrelated to European magpies, these are larger crow-like birds. Their most notable thing is that they attack humans during nesting season (spring). A few people are hospitalised every year with wounds caused by magpie attacks; sometimes people lose eyes. The best way to prevent attacks is to look at them – they attack from behind. Wearing false eyes on the back of your head/hat also helps.

Masked lapwing (pictured). Pretty common near water and also in open grassy areas, looking for worms and grubs in the grass.

Silver gull. Everywhere near salt water. These are the squabbling pigeons of the shoreline. Also seen inland.

The above birds are common enough that I see them virtually every week. The following ones I see less often.

Crested pigeon. These are much nicer birds than the more common feral pigeons. They have a comical topknot spike of feathers and make a squeaking/whistling sound as they fly. It’s caused by the air moving across their flapping wings.

Australian pelican. These are common near the ocean and sea lagoons, but I don’t travel out to the ocean every week, so I only see them occasionally.

Australian raven. Sometimes difficult to tell from a currawong from a distance. These are a bit less common.

Laughing kookaburra (pictured from my living room window). I see one of these maybe a couple of times a month. Or hear them – they’re very loud.

Galah. These can be seen occasionally in large flocks, either flying across Sydney, or settled into grassy areas to graze on seeds. There’s a flock that I see occasionally in the park areas near my work.

White-faced heron. I never used to notice these, but since I’ve been keeping an eye out for birds, I see them moderately often, all over Sydney.

These birds I see a few times a month to a few times a year. There are other birds that I see occasionally or rarely within Sydney as well, such as: black swan, willy wagtail, purple swamphen, Australian brushturkey, superb lyrebird. Occasionally I’ll spot a raptor of some sort, a falcon or small eagle, flying far overhead. The coolest bird I’ve ever seen in the city is a powerful owl, perched on a power line as I was walking home from a restaurant one night.

I’m sure I’m missing some species, probably including some fairly common ones that I just don’t know the names of yet.

Walking home from the train station this afternoon, I saw a colourful parrot fly right through my eyeline and up into a nearby tree. I figured it was just a rainbow lorikeet (left), which are plentiful around our home. We have several species of parrots that are common around here. The lorikeets are all over the place, but we also get sulphur-crested cockatoos and galahs fairly often.

So anyway, this lorikeet flew right past… Only it wasn’t a lorikeet! I had to look twice at it when it was perched in the tree, and I realised it was too big and the colour… It was a king parrot (right)! This is only the second time I’ve seen a king parrot within earshot of home, in almost 15 years living here. What’s more, as I was standing gawping and admiring the bird, another one flew past. Cool.

Look who visited my balcony this morning. There were three rainbow lorikeets hanging around. I tried offering them sunflower seeds, but they didn’t like them much. Only when I checked later did I realise they are nectar and fruit eaters. Ooops.